Health & Disease in Britain: From Prehistory to the Present Day

Contemporary Review, April, 2004

Health & Disease in Britain: From Prehistory to the Present Day. Charlotte Roberts and Margaret Cox. Sutton Publishing. [pounds sterling]25.00. xix 476 pages. ISBN 0-7509-1844-6. This important study, jointly written by an archaeologist and an archaeologist-anthropologist sets out 'to assess the health and disease of the population of Britain from prehistory to the present'.

It is a mammoth task for, as the authors write, 'health and disease are necessary parts of life and death'. The first chapter acts as an extended introduction to the nature of health and disease and to the means by which both can be studied in the British Isles. In itself this first chapter is worth the price of the book. After this the authors follow a chronological approach and each chapter is itself introduced with a discussion of the factors that affected the health of people in that period, factors such as environment, climate, economy, diet, living conditions, hygiene, population, occupations and historical events that affect health, e.g. war. The book not only gives one a wonderful understanding of the subject but a wealth of facts. In the pre-Roman period (10500 BC to 43 AD) men got shorter whilst women got taller. Between c. 1559 and c. 1850, as unplanned urbanisation led to lower standards of hygiene, childhood killers such as measles increased whilst tuberculosis replaced smallpox and plague as the major causes of death. In recent years we have made significant progress in some fields, such as infant mortality, but regressed in others, such as smoking related illnesses. There is a wealth of information in this study that any student of history will find invaluable to a fuller understanding of British life. (J.M.)